After the initial forced grounding of the bulk carrier the OS 35, and the immense efforts of the Ministry for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Heritage and Cultures in house remote pilot and observer.

near Technologies Gibraltar was contracted by Ministry for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Heritage and Culture of HM Government of Gibraltar to conduct flights over the OS 35 on a on demand service. This mean near Technologies Gibraltar set up a rotation and deployed all assets to be able to full-fill this requirement.

The full deployment of assets which involved setting up a camp within the now demolished ‘Caleta Hotel’ on the old Nunos balcony.

near Technologies M300 RTK and TOLP on the old Nuno’s Restaurant balcony inside the derelict La Caleta Hotel

Having a generator onsite meant we are able to deploy to TOLP and maintain almost constant flight with the M300RTKs hot swappable battery set up. This enables our remote pilots to land the aircraft stop the motors and quickly change 1 battery at a time. This means the aircraft does not need to be powered down. I Believe one of our pilots got the swap time down to 20 sec from landing, power off motors, swap, and take off once again.

Utilising the M300RTK and H20N payloads this enabled near Technologies Gibraltar to home in on oil slicks that where not visible to the naked eye during low light and night conditions. This information was securely streamed to The Civil Contingency meetings in No.6 so the commanders, and major stake holders had live, valuable information that was able to enhance situational awareness from the birds eye view.

near Technologies Gibraltar took the opportunity to conduct a Light Indicating Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) flight & Photogrammetry flight over the OS 35 which was subsequently uploaded to the Governments GIS System (which was a system that near Technologies Gibraltar ( Contracted by Ministry for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Heritage and Culture has set up and maintained since 2013 though to present day) again this is an invaluable tool to better gain situational awareness and use tools enabled by GIS platforms to run various scenarios.

We are unsure if this is the first time this technology has been applied to this scenario of a partially submersed wreck but we have not been able to find any correspondence or case studies of this technology being used for this application.

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Once the initial response and containment had been controlled by the fantastic efforts of the Ministry for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Heritage and Culture, the Gibraltar Port Authority, & Oil Spill Response Limited. As well as all other parties involved both in Gibraltar and across the boarder with the Savlamento Maritimo.
It was time for us to pack up our 30 day + camp in La Caleta hotel and move to 3 flights per day which meant we could move to mobile deployment flying from La Caleta carpark or Black Strap Cove while maintaining the ability to ramp back up to a 24 hour deployment if the situation was to change.

near Technologies Gibraltar would like to thank HM Government of Gibraltar for trusting our capabilities and professional team during an environmental disaster. These thanks are extended to all departments involved, including other Drone operators in Gibraltar for professionally working with us to coordinate flights for various other parties involved.

A Special thanks must go to Ministry for the Environment, Sustainability, Climate Change, Heritage and Culture for continuing to support our business throughout an array of works and for their trust in near Technologies Gibraltar in contracting us as a first response to assist in this Environmental disaster.